


Queenmaker

by La Reine Noire (lareinenoire)



Category: Richard III - Shakespeare
Genre: Alternate Ending, Character Death, F/M, Uncle/Niece Incest, Women Being Awesome
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-19
Updated: 2013-08-19
Packaged: 2017-12-23 23:40:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/932456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lareinenoire/pseuds/La%20Reine%20Noire
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Elizabeth will be queen, and sometimes the only path to take is the crooked one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queenmaker

**Author's Note:**

  * For [the_alchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_alchemist/gifts).



> The prompt was "Elizabeth of York falls in love with Richard III, and this changes history." That isn't quite what ended up happening, but it's definitely an alternate ending. As I was trying to figure out this fic, it occurred to me that the only way to make Richard/Elizabeth work was by adding more women and running Elizabeth's character completely counter to what we know from canon. Many thousands of thanks to my wonderful and patient betas, R., A., and W.

Elizabeth knew she would be queen of England someday. Her granddam had told her so--not the Duchess, her father's mother, but her _other_ granddam, now buried beside Elizabeth's grandfather beneath the altar in Grafton Regis. When Elizabeth's brother came into the world in sanctuary, she'd placed her head in her granddam's lap and sobbed for her lost destiny.

 

"Nay, child," the lady Jacquetta had told her, stroking her hair. "You shall be queen. The ways of the world are crooked on the best of days, but I promise you the crown shall be yours."

 

It was said that the lady Jacquetta was a witch, though Elizabeth had never seen proof for herself, save that her granddam had _known_ things. "How do you know?" she had asked on that day, sniffling.

 

"I know, and you will too, when the time comes." It was a disappointing answer, but it was all she would ever have.

 

Her granddam had died the next year, though not until after Elizabeth's father had returned from exile and regained his throne. Soon after, little Edward was sent off to the Welsh Marches to learn how to be king. How one could learn to be king in a boggy wilderness was a mystery to Elizabeth; she remained at court, at her father's side, watching him be a king every single day. Sometimes, she would climb onto his lap during council meetings, and he would laugh and kiss her forehead and call her his froward little princess. But he always let her stay, and sometimes gave her the royal seal to press into a puddle of red wax.

 

Surely _this_ was how one learnt to rule.

 

Elizabeth knew the streets of London as well as she knew the corridors of Westminster Palace. The people cheered her as she passed, even louder than they cheered her father, for she was young and comely while he grew older and drunker and fatter by the day. Instead of stealing their wives, Elizabeth purchased silks and jewels and books from the city merchants, and though she could never remember them all by name as her father did, she often recalled their children and their stories. _Our princess_ , they called her, _London's princess_.

 

But would the city of London make her a queen? Not while her brother lived, though they did not know him and he was a sour, pinch-faced boy who cared for nothing but books and sermons and her uncle Rivers.

 

Her uncle Gloucester shared that opinion, she knew. She'd discovered that at Christmas when he and his lady came to court from their chilly northern castle and he'd caught her whispering with her sister Cecily while their brother was presented to the king.

 

"He looks like a pile of sticks," Elizabeth hissed. "Do they feed him anything in Ludlow?"

 

"Sheep, most like," Cecily said. "But you mustn't say such things, Bess."

 

"Why not? And why can't he smile?"

 

"Uncle Anthony told me he had a toothache. You should be kinder to him. He's not used to court."

 

"If he's going to be king, he needs to learn," Elizabeth said with a sniff worthy of their granddam Duchess Cecily. "I'd be a better queen than him."

 

"Bess!" Cecily's eyes were round as saucers. "That's _treason_."

 

"Queen of _France_ , silly," Elizabeth told her, the lie couched in laughter. "I'm still engaged to the Dauphin, after all."

 

"Not for long, if the rumours are correct." They both turned at the sound of a man's voice behind them. Elizabeth's father would not countenance talk of his younger brother's crooked limbs and withered arm in public, but it was difficult not to stare when faced with them so suddenly. "Lady Elizabeth, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I fear the French king has reneged on his bargain."

 

Elizabeth met his eyes, as grey and cold as she imagined the north of England to be. "Does my father know of this?"

 

"Aye, he does. He wished to spare you till after the festivities, but he does not understand that pity can wound worse than scorn. I, on the other hand," he gestured to his bad arm with the good one, "know it well."

 

"What do you suggest, then, my lord of Gloucester?" Elizabeth rose to her feet, back straight and chin high, as imperious as her mother. "What revenge should I have on the Dauphin for jilting me?"

 

"Why, take France from him, of course," her uncle replied with a wicked smile. "When you are queen."

 

"Uncle, for shame," Cecily put in, frowning, "you mustn't encourage her. Our brother Edward will be king when Father dies, and that won't be for years yet."

 

She was proven wrong three months later, when a sudden apoplexy took their father to his grave. It had been brought on, some said, by God's own hand raised against the king for killing his own blood kin. Not her uncle Gloucester, but her uncle Clarence, who Elizabeth barely knew, and who had been imprisoned in the tower for treason against the crown. That he had been guilty of treason was beyond doubt--had he not raised an army against King Edward and driven him into exile? True, he had knelt and begged forgiveness and without him the king could not have returned, but Elizabeth's mother had never forgiven Clarence and nor, despite his public shows, had the king.

 

And now her uncle of Gloucester was to be Lord Protector over Elizabeth's brother. She wondered if he recalled what he'd said to her at Christmas, and when word arrived that he'd waylaid the soon-to-be King Edward on the road to London and taken him prisoner, something resembling hope began to flutter in Elizabeth's heart.

 

Of course, that was before her mother took them off to sanctuary again, ignoring Elizabeth's protests that there was nothing to fear from uncle Gloucester. _He will destroy us all_ , her mother replied, her beautiful eyes like fear-filled hollows, _just as he destroyed Clarence, just as Queen Margaret foretold_.

 

Her mother was forever speaking of Queen Margaret and her curses, but Elizabeth had never seen her. Indeed, she could not help but wonder if her mother had gone mad; if the seemingly endless wars of York and Lancaster and the death of Elizabeth’s royal father had taken a deeper and darker toll than any had suspected. For certain, she _seemed_ mad, fleeing to sanctuary in Westminster Abbey against the advice of all the council.

 

Elizabeth was with her, and her sisters and youngest brother, all huddled in the Archbishop's palace like rats. Elizabeth would have gone to her uncle herself, but her mother's eagle eye had fixed itself firmly on her as a potential threat.

 

Instead, the Archbishop of York and the duke of Buckingham came and took her youngest brother from her mother's clinging arms. Elizabeth too had clung to him, certain even as her mother was that they would not see him again. It was a bare few weeks before word arrived that the boys had disappeared to the land from which no man returns, and that their uncle would be crowning himself King Richard ere long.

 

Elizabeth watched too as her mother sobbed and tore her hair, as her granddam of York shrieked curses upon her last living son, the embodiment of her shame. Though she knew they were alone in the chapel, from the corner of her eye, Elizabeth could have sworn she saw a shadow, heard the thread of a woman's laughter.

 

She turned away and returned to the cramped chamber she shared with her sisters. Their time would come, soon enough.

 

***

 

They were called back to court for the year-mind of her father's death, and Elizabeth and her sisters were given positions within Queen Anne's household. The queen herself was pale and sickly, and the whispers followed her from room to room like the reaper's shadow itself, but she persisted through the year and it was only as the air grew chillier and Christmas approached that Elizabeth began to wonder if the rumours were true and the king was helping his frail Neville wife into her grave. But the new year came and went and still she lingered, through the feast of Saint Valentine (when all the young gallants of court pressed Elizabeth for her favour and she laughed and turned them all away), and it was only in the darkest days of Lent that the royal physician finally ordered that she keep to her rooms, murmuring to king and council that it was only a matter of weeks now.

 

The queen gazed unseeing at her looking-glass, a lace handkerchief pressed against her mouth. Silently, Elizabeth lifted the crown from her head and placed it on its cushion. Anne closed her eyes and shuddered.

 

"Your Grace?" Elizabeth asked. "Is there anything you need?"

 

Anne gave a bitter bark of laughter. "Absolution."

 

Elizabeth blinked. "I don't understand, Your Grace."

 

The queen's dark eyes fixed on her now, narrowed and suspicious. "Don't you, Lady Elizabeth?"

 

"You are the queen of England, Your Grace. The envy of every woman."

 

"I am married to a monster who stole the throne from his butchered nephews. Your brothers, Lady Elizabeth. Do you not blame me for that?"

 

Elizabeth shook her head. "My brother Edward was a stranger to me. Richard..." she kept her eyes on the ground, "Richard is in my prayers every night. But he is in heaven now, no doubt laughing at me."

 

"It was my husband who killed them."

 

"For the good of England, Your Grace. My brother on the throne would have ripped the kingdom apart. You yourself saw the fruits of it. The people did not know him, nor did he care to know them."

 

"Not like you." Anne raised the handkerchief to her mouth again and coughed. Elizabeth could not be certain, but she thought she saw specks of red on the white lawn before the queen concealed it within her sleeve. "You were your father's favourite, even above his heir. That is what my husband says."

 

"The king knew my father well. His weaknesses as well as his strengths."

 

"He named you a bastard, shamed you before the world. I do not believe you a saint, Lady Elizabeth." One thin hand caught Elizabeth by the wrist, and she could not help but notice that the queen's fingers were shaking. "You play a deeper game, I think."

 

Elizabeth finally met her eyes, but instead of the expected anger she saw only weariness. "I play no games, Your Grace. I have not that luxury."

 

"If it is the throne you want, you would be welcome to it. The people hate my husband for a butcher, a spider, a bunch-backed toad. They want your father back, and perhaps you think you can give them that." Anne's smile was a fleeting thing, full of mockery. "Go on, then. Try it. Feel its weight and tell me then if you still want it."

 

They were both looking at the crown now, warm and golden in the candlelight. Anne let Elizabeth go and sank back into her chair as Elizabeth reached out and brushed her fingers across the metal and gems. "You are the queen, Your Grace, not I."

 

"But are you willing to pay the price?"

 

"Blood is the price my father paid for his crown," said Elizabeth, her eyes on the great central ruby that seemed to glow from within. "Why should I shrink from it?"

 

"We are our fathers' daughters," said the queen, before another coughing fit seized her. Her father had been the earl of Warwick, the great kingmaker who had placed Elizabeth's own father on England's throne. When the queen lowered the handkerchief from her mouth this time, the lawn was bright red. Her eyes met Elizabeth's and she laughed bitterly. "My father died on a battlefield, a sword through his heart. It is a different sword pierces mine."

 

She died a week later as the skies darkened over England. A curse, the people whispered, upon King Richard and his reign.

 

Elizabeth found him kneeling in the abbey where the queen lay in state beneath cloth-of-gold embroidered with the arms of Beauchamp and Warwick. He did not turn his head, though the words confirmed that he had seen her.

 

"Your mother spoke to you, then?"

 

"My mother said nothing to me," Elizabeth told him. "She and I are not on terms."

 

He glanced toward her then, frowning. "What does that mean?"

 

"It means," said Elizabeth, pausing to kneel and genuflect, "that I speak for myself, on mine own behalf. As Elizabeth Plantagenet, daughter of the fourth King Edward."

 

"And what is Elizabeth Plantagenet's will?" asked the king, wariness tightening his voice where once he might have laughed.

 

"She wishes to be queen of England, Your Grace." Elizabeth looked at him, fingers steepled beneath her chin.

 

Richard finally smiled, though it did not reach his eyes. "And so she shall be."

 

***

 

They were married just after Midsummer's Eve, having waited for the dispensation to arrive from Rome; it would not do, after all, to marry without the Pope's blessing in such dark times. Her mother would not speak to her; her sisters too were a wall of stony silence. Even Cecily looked at her as though she were no better than that harlot Mistress Shore.

 

Her granddam of Bedford would have understood. Her granddam of York merely pressed her bony fingers to Elizabeth's temples and brushed a dry kiss across her forehead. "I cannot wish you joy of him, child. Guard your crown carefully."

 

"I will, my lady duchess," Elizabeth told her. "With my life."

 

Word arrived soon afterward of the fleet from Brittany landing at Milford Haven, and the king plunged into preparations for war with Henry of Richmond. She wondered if Richmond knew of her marriage. Surely he must; surely the Countess Margaret had told him, scorn underlining each word. After all, Elizabeth had jilted him for a hunchbacked monster. She could almost see the words as though she had written them herself.

 

Richard knelt before her on the day he was due to depart and Elizabeth took his hands in hers. "I will guard the seal and the kingdom for you, my lord husband." The Great Seal hung heavy around her neck on its thick chain of gold. Richard had left it with her, insistent that he could trust no one else.

 

There was a terrible hope in his eyes as he asked, hesitantly, "I don't suppose you know...?"

 

"Nothing yet," she murmured. Her blood had come the previous week, though she could not say whether or not it pleased her. "We will have time enough for sons, my lord, when you return."

 

"Aye," he said. He stood and grabbed her round the waist for a bruising kiss, and she later found the marks on her skin from his gauntleted hand. "Pray for me, my queen, and for victory over this Breton rabble."

 

But when the news came from Leicester, it was of defeat and death. As Henry of Richmond and his victorious army (his uncle Stanley at his side, for Richard had been foolish enough to trust that turncloak, though he was wed to Countess Margaret and danced ever to her tune) wended their way toward London, Elizabeth hied herself to the Tower in preparation for a siege. It was what her mother had done when the dead earl of Warwick's brother had marched on London for revenge, only there was no husband to ride to Elizabeth's rescue, only a tattered, leaderless army now following Henry of Richmond.

 

Instead, Richmond paused before the Tower gates and asked for a parley. Richard's crown glinted on his head, one of its tines bent from the blow that had shattered his head. Elizabeth motioned for her men to let him in, but only if he consented to speak to her alone.

 

She invited him to the grandest chambers the fortress offered and seated herself on her throne. Beside her, the king's seat was empty--tantalisingly so, she could see, for his eyes flickered to it almost as often as they did to her. He was a sour, narrow-faced man, pinched by nervousness and privation. He did not trust her, nor would he ever, for had she not married his enemy of her own free will?

 

"My lord of Richmond," Elizabeth said, gesturing to the table laid out before her. "I pray you, seat yourself."

 

"Will there be any other guests, my--" At the narrowing of her eyes, he corrected himself, though not without a grimace, "Your Grace?"

 

Elizabeth smiled. "Just us, my lord. You were kind enough to accept my invitation."

 

"I saw no other way to speak to you," he replied bluntly. "You must see reason. Your husband is dead." Hacked to pieces on the battlefield, she'd been told, his body slung into a pit like a dog's. It was this man before her who was responsible, and yet she felt nothing as she looked at him.

 

"And I hold the royal seal, the Tower, and the city of London, my lord," Elizabeth reminded him, "without which I fear you will never hold England. But let us not talk of tedious matters." With a motion of her hand, she summoned one of her ladies with a flagon of wine. "What is it that you plan to do, my lord?"

 

"Your Grace," he corrected her.

 

"Really?" Elizabeth fixed her eyes upon him and, to her satisfaction, he was the first to look away. "How, pray? Even if you claim the throne by conquest, you have not been crowned."

 

Henry of Richmond did not answer at first. He fiddled with his rings, then took a nervous sip of wine. Then, setting the glass down so firmly that droplets scattered across the tablecloth, he demanded, "Do you carry the abomination's child?"

 

"Abomination?" Elizabeth laughed, raising her own goblet to her lips. "I assure you, my lord, my husband was sufficiently equipped to produce an heir."

 

For a moment, she wondered if he might be so ill-mannered as to be sick at table. To her relief, he controlled himself. "Then you are with child?"

 

"I said nothing of the sort. I do not yet know." The lie would buy her several weeks at least, while Richmond and his prying mother sought the best remedy. He had no claim of his own, after all; half the reason he had mustered any support in England was his promise to marry Elizabeth, a promise she herself had broken on the day she gave her hand to her uncle.

 

It was at that moment that Henry of Richmond began to cough, one hand clutching his belly. When he looked at her again, his eyes were suddenly full of fear. "You...the wine..."

 

Elizabeth's smile, she knew, was positively wolfish. "I find I rather enjoy being queen of England, my lord of Richmond. I should not like to give it up."

 

***

 

It was said that the Countess of Richmond had torn her gown to shreds on hearing of her son's death. He was found in the Thames, washed up near Blackfriars. Rumours spilled from London that he'd tried to ravish the queen and was killed by her guards. Others claimed he was set upon outside the Tower and killed by accident; after all, nobody knew who he was. The most fanciful told tales of poison and the deadly beauty of Queen Elizabeth, but only the greatest fools credited that.

 

His body had been treated with all respect and he lay in state for a week in St. Paul's before being buried at Chertsey beside his admittedly distant relation, the former king Henry VI. Elizabeth did not attend the funeral; she had more important concerns.

 

Her first visitor was the ambassador from Burgundy, who greeted her with a message from her aunt the Dowager Duchess. _They will demand that you remarry and no doubt they will press the French king as the best choice. Be wary, and do not let them push you. Learn your enemies first, and let your friends come to you_. On its heels was the French ambassador, bearing greetings and condolences from King Charles and, to Elizabeth's surprise, his elder sister. She recalled the story that King Louis had thrown aside tradition and named his daughter Anne de Beaujeu the regent of France on her brother's behalf.

 

 _If my royal father had done that..._ But there was no point in dwelling on decisions long past. Elizabeth read Madame de Beaujeu's letter with puzzlement, as it did not even once mention a possible marriage. Indeed, the lady had wished her good fortune. _We are all women alone, Your Grace. If we cannot trust one another, the men will rip apart the world_.

 

So she strode into the great hall of Westminster Palace, past rows of peers and commoners alike who had gathered for a special session of parliament.

 

"We have no king," Elizabeth said. For a moment, her words echoed, multiplied, and lingered in the air. "Nor, I fear, is there likely to be an heir of King Richard's body."

 

The whispers began, a low sussurus at first, but then growing into a sound like a swarm of bees. She was losing them already.

 

Elizabeth stood. The sound stopped as the rest of the room rose with her.

 

"But what we have, gentlemen of England, is an heir of _King Edward's_ body. _I_ am his rightful heir, am I not? Is there a man in this room who would deny that I am his daughter?"

 

"His _daughter_ , aye." That was Sir William Stanley, his words thick with scorn and laughter. "A woman on the throne of England?"

 

"And why not a woman, my lord?" Elizabeth asked him, her smile sweet as a dagger's point. "It would seem to me, having known mine own father, that a man's prick is a detriment rather than an asset to his rule."

 

The roar that inspired reached to the hall's rafters as men shouted and stamped and raved. In the centre of the room, Elizabeth stood silent, her hands clasped before her, her head bowed, as the storm raged around her.

 

Her deliverance came from a most unexpected source--her cousin of Lincoln, the man her uncle had designated heir presumptive after the death of his own son the year before. He was only a year or two her senior, but seemed far older now Richard was dead. John de la Pole said nothing at first, but knelt instead before Elizabeth. In tones so soft that even the nearest lords had to crane their ears, he spoke his words of fealty, his hands clasped between Elizabeth's.

 

"I accept your loyalty, my lord," she said, her heart hammering even as she spoke the words. Then, whispered with a quick and sheepish smile, "I thank you, Cousin John."

 

His grin was lightning-quick. "Just make sure to execute Lord Stanley, Your Grace, and I will be your man till the hour of my death."

 

"You may be sure of it," Elizabeth said, her eyes narrowing at Stanley. His face had grown pale beneath his beard. She would need to alert her guards to keep him close.

 

That night, she found her mother waiting in her chambers. The dowager queen studied her for a moment, then sighed. "Thank God you aren't with child."

 

"And good evening to you too, Mother," said Elizabeth, rolling her eyes. "Queen mother, I should say. I fear I shan't prove as pliant as my brother would have been."

 

"I mean you no harm, Elizabeth. I never meant you harm. I lost three of my children to that butcher you married; I feared every day that you would be the fourth." She paused to take a breath. Elizabeth watched her in silence, knowing what she must ask. "Why did you do it?"

 

She also knew her answer. "Why did you marry my father?"

 

Elizabeth knew the story, of course. Her mother had come to court to plead for her dead husband's lands. As his two brothers looked on and laughed, the king heard her suit and agreed to grant it, provided she come to his bed that night. Her mother refused, giving reason after reason until the king, overawed by her beauty and her wits, made her his queen.

 

"Because only a fool would have refused him," her mother replied, eyes narrowed. "You could have had Richmond. A _whole_ man."

 

"Instead, I have none. Isn't it splendid?"

 

"They won't allow it," her mother said. "Those men out there; they're indulging you, nothing more. Find a husband who pleases you, and do it quickly."

 

"I will find a husband who pleases me _when_ it pleases me," said Elizabeth. "As to why I married Richard, it is because he understood what it was to want a crown that would never come to you." Not by right, in any case.

 

Her mother said nothing at first. Then, she walked toward the door, each of her steps seeming to take an age. With one last glance back at Elizabeth, she said, "I will pray for you, my daughter."

 

It was the last time Elizabeth ever saw her mother.

 

Her sisters, for their own reasons, were more forgiving. Cecily's absence hurt the most, and after sending for her Elizabeth had wondered for days if she had made the right choice. But then her sister rode into the courtyard at Westminster and the smile on Cecily's face told her everything she needed to know. Anne and Catherine had remained with her at court as her ladies-in-waiting, and Bridget was already being fostered with the nuns at Syon at their mother's request and, in any event, was too young to remember anything about their father or brothers, or even Richard.

 

"Just promise me, Bess," Cecily said that night, "that you will rule well."

 

"I will be a great queen, Cecily, if they will let me." They were seated on the great bed of state just as they'd sat together on Elizabeth's bed as girls. "And if you will help me, then how could I fail?"

 

***

 

On the eve of her coronation, Elizabeth buried her husband beneath the altar at Westminster, beside his first wife. The three lords who stood beside her would ride that very night to York to bring tidings to her uncle's vassals, who had once been her aunt's. Will Catesby had smiled for the first time since Bosworth when he heard her orders.

 

"His Grace said you were the cleverest of his brother's children," he'd murmured.

 

"I mean them no ill will, and I trust they mean none to me." The Nevilles had ever been loved in the north, and her uncle's swift remarriage would not have pleased their allies, but Elizabeth was not too proud to bow if it was required of her. "My aunt was a good and kind woman, and it was His Grace's wish to lie beside her."

 

It was not, of course. But Elizabeth was as much a daughter of York as Richard had been its son; deception was in her very blood.

 

Catesby, Lovell, and the earl of Lincoln all took their leave. As the echoes of their footsteps faded, Elizabeth looked upon the plain stone slab--far too simple for a king, but some would say far too much for _this_ king. In the confusion following Henry of Richmond's untimely death, the grey monks of Leicester had quietly buried King Richard, but that would not do for a king of England, however he came by the crown.

 

Elizabeth looked down at the white rose in her hand, then at the stone engraved with Richard's name. "I wonder what kind of king you would have been. You didn't have any time. Of course, my father had a great deal of time, didn't he? And we saw what came of that."

 

She laughed, then clapped her hands over her mouth as it echoed round the empty choir. "They'll think me mad with grief, no doubt. Talking to a stone. Well, you talked to yourself all the time. I remember. You'd talk in your sleep. I sleep very well now, I'll have you know."

 

She leant forward and placed the rose on the slab. "Well, I daresay you're sleeping now. I hope that hell is very boring for you."

 

***

 

On the year-mind of his death, she arrived with two roses, one red and one white. The red rose, she left on her aunt's gravestone, below the engraved name _Edward of Lancaster_. The white, she held as she told Richard of Lord Stanley's execution for treason. He had approached John of Lincoln and asked if he planned to make good on his claim to the throne. Lincoln had delivered him to Pontefract, where Elizabeth was staying at the time, and he'd lost his head that very evening.

 

"He looked surprised," she told Richard. "So very surprised. He tried to say something about how I was no better than you, tainted by your evil, but they all heard him for the fool he was. Even the Countess of Richmond has bent her knee. She is in seclusion now. They say she's writing her memoirs. If she does, I'll ask her for a copy. They should make for good reading, don't you think?"

 

She told him too of his brother Clarence's children, who she had taken into her household. "I have so many children, my lord, and none are my own." Elizabeth set the rose on the slab. "They're saying I fought you off with a dagger to save my virtue. Isn't that funny? I let them say it, of course. You're the only one who knows what really happened, and you're not telling anyone."

 

***

 

She visited him every year on that day, and on many others too. After her mother died, she sat in the chapel for a night. When the Scots retook Berwick and the army she sent north fell in the first engagement, she raged at him for hours and decided in the end to let King James and his highland armies keep the city. Her aunt sent an embassage with an offer of betrothal to the infant duke of Burgundy and Elizabeth quite seriously considered it, remarking to Richard that having a husband still in swaddling-clothes had its advantages.

 

"My aunt of Burgundy knows it's impossible, of course," she said, twirling the rose between her fingers. "By the time he could produce an heir, I would be unable to carry one. So perhaps it must be France."

 

If her younger brother Edward had lived, he and the king of France would be of an age. It had been her father's dream to see his daughter crowned queen of France, though she doubted King Edward had expected it to come about in quite this way. She suspected Richard found it uproariously funny.

 

"I know they whisper about how much time I spend here. My reputation for piety might eclipse the Countess of Richmond's," she told him one day, in the third year of her reign. "I wonder what they'd think if they knew I was talking to you."

 

Nothing flattering, for certain. She had forbidden mention of the late king Richard in her presence, but she knew how the rumours had spread of his monstrosity, each wilder than the last. She would set the record straight, sooner or later, but Richard's reputation could wait for the nonce. It was her reputation that concerned her now.

 

She had promised Cecily that she would rule well, but Elizabeth had yet to understand what that meant. She had had her uncle Rivers' library brought from Ludlow Castle, but all of his books spoke only of men. Even the great bound volume of Christine of Pisa, with its illuminated pages coloured brightly as gems, contained no treatise to teach a queen how to rule. Only kings.

 

If marriage to Charles of France would bring peace to England at least, surely that was reason enough. Then she thought of her sisters, her cousins; the children who dined with her every night. _I have my heirs already, do I not_? She wrote to her aunt of her dilemma and the Duchess Margaret sent her a book that Christine of Pisa had not included in her grand volume for a long-dead queen of France. It was a book of queens and ladies and even city and country women, and Elizabeth burned a dozen candles to finish reading it.

 

"You think you're so very different from the rest of us?" It was a woman's voice, but one she did not know. The book slipped from Elizabeth's grasp and she reached for the dagger she'd started keeping concealed beneath her pillow. "Foolish girl. Just like your mother. Just like _me_."

 

 _It can't be. She's dead. Everybody told me she was dead_. "Who are you?"

 

"Your mother sought my help. She begged me to teach her how to curse that creature. _That poisonous, bunch-backed toad_." Elizabeth's fingers trembled around the dagger's hilt. "And yet you married him."

 

"I married him. And I survived him."

 

"We all survived our kings. Only now there is no one left. Only you." Elizabeth could see the shape moving just beyond the curtains of her bed. "And you think you will rule?"

 

"What other choice do they have?" she demanded. _I have my heirs already_. She had a whole bevy of heirs.

 

She could hear the smile in the woman's voice. _Margaret. Her name is Margaret_. "They have dozens of choices, as you do. Clarence's children. Your cousins of Suffolk and Buckingham and Pembroke. Your brothers."

 

"My brothers are dead."

 

"So they say. But there are those who disagree. I cursed your mother to die neither wife, nor mother, nor England's queen, but you seem to have escaped somehow."

 

Elizabeth smiled. "As daughters often do."

 

Margaret had ceased her prowling and Elizabeth could see the shadow poised at the foot of her bed. "I could curse you too, Elizabeth of York. It would be within my rights."

 

"I stole nothing from you that you had not already lost," Elizabeth said. "By rights it should be my mother who curses me, yet she does not."

 

"Oh, but she did. On the night she learnt of your betrothal to your _uncle_ ," the word itself was a curse, "she cursed your faithlessness and your greed and I heard her."

 

"Do it, then. I defy you, Margaret of Anjou. Do it."

 

"Perhaps I will." She retreated a little. "I will bide my time. Perhaps you will exceed my expectations."

 

When she awakened, she had the guards search the entire palace, but they found no trace of an old woman. But by then she had already made her decision.

 

She was Queen Elizabeth the First, and she would share her throne with no one

**Author's Note:**

> The "Christine of Pisa" book that Elizabeth finds is meant to be [British Library MS Harley 4431](http://www.pizan.lib.ed.ac.uk/index.html), a stunningly illuminated presentation copy of (most of) the collected works of Christine de Pizan initially produced as a gift for Queen Isabeau of France in January 1414. After the battle of Agincourt and the Treaty of Troyes (1420), much of the French royal library passed into the hands of Henry V and his brothers John of Bedford and Humphrey of Gloucester. John of Bedford's second wife was Jacquetta of Luxembourg, who later remarried a knight named Sir Richard Woodville, and whose daughter married King Edward IV in 1464. Jacquetta's signature and motto appear in this manuscript, on [this page](http://www.pizan.lib.ed.ac.uk/gallery/pages/001r.htm). The book passed to her son Anthony, and from him into the royal library, presumably through his niece, Elizabeth of York. The one work of Christine's missing from the presentation copy is her advice book for women, titled _The Treasury of the City of Ladies, or the Book of the Three Virtues_ , most likely because some of the advice would have implicitly criticised the queen of France, to whom she was presenting the volume.


End file.
